Emansor

I think my arc could use some more help.

Title: The Day I Tried To Live
Faction: Neutral
Arc ID: 214195
Difficulty Level: Hard. Crey, Rikti, Custom group. Two EBs (AV's depending on difficulty).

Synopsis – Listen to a story, where the line between reality and delusion blur. The Black consumes the Grey and invades the White like an oily snake. A tale of self destruction, rage, desperation and a hint of love. Be an observer into the madness, tumbling through a downward spiral of a Hero and a Madman.

Story Type – Serious
Mission Count: 5

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Unforgiving Criticism

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Do I have your word on this?

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The general idea was based on the idea that Vanessa DeVore needs a constant source of energy to keep the Carnies under her power. An "unstoppable fountain" of psionic energy seemed like just the ticket, so her minions go in to retrieve the poor girl. But Josephine's powers were too much and she easily overcame the Carnies (who were already psychically compromised by Vanessa's constant presence). Most of this is only vaguely hinted at, though. I'll see what I can do about this in the re-write.

I am glad, at least, that the AV wasn't crazy-hard. As for myself (a casual gamer with a Fire/Fire Blaster main), I usually need at least one ally to bring her down.

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Hmmm, makes sense. I'll play it again when you re-write it.


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And PS:

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I zone into… A blue cave map and the nav bar says I need to rescue Dr. Widemore or something. I open the map and see it’s been half cleared, then I see three people come running toward me to the exit. Mission complete. I guess I somehow zoned into someone elses mission? Very strange.

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Did this really happen? O.o

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Yeah, it was a bit surreal. Apparently zoning into someone elses in-progress mission has happened to other people as well.

The Double Edged Sword – 4384

Played on a 50 Fire/Fire Blaster with Set IOs
Set at Difficulty 3


Mission 1 –

Mynx is the contact and tells me Crey are bringing a cargo ship into port and are trying to keep it under wraps, hidden. I am sent into Crey Industries lawyers office to find a manifest so we can sort this out.

Typical office map with four floors, not too bad.

- The computer was on the second floor and it was the first clickable object I came across, mission complete. I went to the other floors just to see if anything else was there and saw a bunch of file cabinets that were largely useless since the mission was already finished, perhaps switch them around?

- De-briefing dialogue “Where the ship will land at” seems weird. Perhaps ‘Which dock the ship will unload at”?


Mission 2 –

Now knowing where the cargo ship will dock at, I am sent to retrieve the cargo from the ship.

You know what that means, the cargo ship map! It fits the story, so all is well, keep cool my babies, keep cool.

Over all, nice mission


Mission 3 –

The story progresses to a secret bunker/lab where Crey does experiments. I am sent to raid the place and rescue test subjects. The custom costumes on them look the part of someone in hospital gowns and the descriptions read of a report on them from a doctor. Nice touch, some of them are allies as well.


Mission 4 –

After freeing the test subjects, Mynx is worried about one that won’t answer her phone calls or respond to her in any way. I am sent to check up on her.

I zone into… A blue cave map and the nav bar says I need to rescue Dr. Widemore or something. I open the map and see it’s been half cleared, then I see three people come running toward me to the exit. Mission complete. I guess I somehow zoned into someone elses mission? Very strange.

I exit and re-enter and now see an orange office map with a nav bar that matches the story arc, all seems well. It appears the Carnies are looking for the same person I am, and I need to defeat the Carnie leader.


Mission 5 –

It appears that the person I was looking for became so powerful that she has become a threat to everyone, and in time, will be unstoppable because of what Crey did to her.

I zone into an outdoor Carnie map and see three optional allies can be rescued and I need to defeat our super human psychic.

I tried to solo her first, using a few inspirations, and she went down rather easily. Mission over. Longbow spawned in as if they were backup help, cool.



Overall I rated it at Three stars–

The story was nice, but the Carnival of Shadows seemed out of place to me. Perhaps improve on why they want the missing girl, or how they know about her. I saw the dialogue about them wanting 'The Fountain', but it just felt like 'Ok, go fight Carnies now'.

The last mission claims that the missing girl…became the Carnival of Shadows overlord? How and why was this able to happen?

The Crey missions were good, but to me, the story seemed to drop off when the Carnies were introduced.

I would recommend it though.

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Mary Sue

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In what way? How powerful the contact claimed to be?


I edited the text earlier, I am assuming you were already mid way through the arc though, to reflect that an ally was present and I emphasized twice that Statesman would show up. Perhaps I will change Statesman to someone else.


You're telling people to skip it based on Statesman?

The arc has had 8 play throughs so far and no one has claimed not to be able to defeat Statesman. Mission Four is the only mission I'm not sure what to do about and has gone through the most changes, and I'm sure will continue to do so.

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i would read the text of a destructible object and it automatically assumes i will be destroying it. even when i am not sure they are required for the completion.

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All the text in the arc is spoken from the contact. So the destructible descriptions are of the contact telling you about it. They are not your thoughts. This could be true for the clue that came early too.

And I suppose it's true that you have no freewill in this arc. Your character is simply being told a story that it's not a part of. I saw no other way of doing this arc based on the premise of the plot.

The map on mission four was either the ruined Atlas map or the small Atlas map with the meteor from the shivian mission. I couldn't decide. I wanted to depict the battle at it's end, and the ruined map was the only map good enough. I suppose I can get rid of the custom group, in reality I wanted an empty map with only the EB spawned.

I never thought about a warning for the EB or Ally, I'll try to work one in before the mission send off text.

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while the style of writing is very different from all the other arcs i have run, it kind of fell flat with me. it is critical for the story, but i had trouble with the play of it. let me explain... since this is a reliving of things already occured, everything accomplished is predestined. for me it loses something. instead of me living the story, i felt i was going from one story object to the next

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This is true, but so is reading a book. I felt the yellowed text from mission one conveyed this message clearly. Perhaps the way the arc description is worded gives off the wrong message?

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yours was looking back at events that i ultimately have no control over

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As I said above, this was intentional.

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i do not know... i liked the story, just not the way it was done

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In the fact that your character, ultimately, isn't the protagonist?

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i had no idea that there was an ally in that mission, nor did i see one. which is a problem since there is no mention of it in the text, nor in the nav bar. how am i supposed to know this?

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I wasn't sure how to mention it in the mission send off text, and I was hoping the player would find him while looking for the boss.

I'll try to find a way though to mention the ally and the EB's.


Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you at least tried the arc. I'll fix the typos, take a look at that early clue and try to change up the Rikti pods.

Added text to the first mission to start everything off and hopefully give the player a better understanding as to the context of the narration.

Changed the synopsis to better reflect that you are hearing a story told by the contact.

Other minor text changes have been made.


- Changed the second map to - Abandoned Tech Small. Removed defeat all in back room objective, changed to clickable objective.

- Changed the map on mission four from outdoor 'Steel Canyon' to 'Atlas ruined'. Removed destroyable objective.

The ally and Elite Boss have green auras that make them easier to find against the dark red landscape.

The Culling of the Cult – 64859

Played with a level 50 Fire/Fire blaster with set IO’s
Set to Difficulty 3



Mission 1 –

The contact, a snake, tells me that he is Shlykk’anos the Great Seer of the snake children. He has foreseen my arrival days before and tells me that one of his kinds last snake hatchery has come under attack. He asks me to stop it, under any means I desire, as long as the offspring are unharmed.

I enter a cave map that is littered with broken egg shells, someone has been busy. I soon discover that Arachnos are the culprits. The boss appears to have had a dream, telling him to destroy the Snake seer and its champion, perhaps its me? Oooooh.

Nice atmosphere and clues.

- ‘A strange situation’ clue tells me that the Seer might help me escape my impending doom. This is the first I heard of it.



Mission 2 –

The seer said he had a vision his lair would be attacked, but not sure why, only that it involved me, him self and our mutual survival.

-Ok, but I’m not aware of any threat toward myself yet. Unless it’s all from what the Arachnos agent said about the Seers champion.

He tells me there is another seer, this time a CoT mage that has powers of vision superior to his own. The contact suspects this mage is the source of the attack on his lair and tells me to defeat him, it would benefit both of us.

I zone into an Orenbega map with CoT scattered around. My objective is to kill the CoT leader. Alcazar was in the second group, it made for a very quick mission.

I defeat the boss and it turns out he was just siphoning the magic out of anyone he can, including our contact. He never heard of the Arachonos agent or me.


Mission 3 –

Our contact is surprised the CoT mage had nothing to do with us and doesn’t know what to do next, so he tells me to come back later while he uses magic to find information about our mutual looming threat.

-Again, I am not aware we have a mutual threat, how am I involved in any of this?

The spell didn’t work as he hoped so he delved into magic unknown to him, the magic of the CoT boss Alcazar, from the previous mission. Our contact exclaims that he saw a glimpse of a reality filled with darkness and madness and it felt intoxicating, uh oh….He also says he saw a cave that was calling out to him. I am sent to look into it because our seer is a wimp and doesn’t want to go himself!

I zone into a unique cave map with a custom group, presented in the form of a secret magical cult. Descriptions are…descriptive…even describing the cults hierarchy. Nice details here.

I need to search for a tablet then defeat a boss called The Whisperer, who appears to also be some type of seer. He knows about the snake man seer thing and its champion, which is in fact, me. He also says I have doomed myself. Uh oh, but how?

-This map had a lot of emptiness too it, groups were far and few inbetween until I got to where the correct tablet was placed. Probably the games fault, but it still felt empty. No points taken off for this though.


Mission 4 –

The seer, after finding out about the tablet and the cult, exclaims it’s all connected, but he needs time to read the tablet to find out where it came from.

The seer has a vision, sort of. I hear another voice coming from the contacts mouth saying it knows who I am and what drives me forward. It invites me to its temple to show me what my future holds.

I need to find the source of the contacts vision, the one who spoke to me through the seer, and find information about the tablet.

The map is another cave snake dwelling. I find an elite boss, a snake man thing, who tells me it was him that spoke through our contact. He wishes to be defeated, and in doing so would give me information, but admits he won’t go down lightly. Upon defeating him he hands me a book. It looks the same as the tablet from earlier.

Handing over the book to the contact surprised him of what it contained.

- The sentence of the de-briefing dialogue is a bit confusing. ‘…what, sickened? No, why would I feel sickened?’. What is this referring to? The text the book contains?

- There are two clues for the book, it seems redundant.




Mission 5 –

It appears the book talks about the first of the first snakeman, Xoas. The cult is somehow tied to him, and a real threat to everyone.

The contact exclaims that with the Elite Boss from mission four out of the way his visions are clearer, so clear he can see the face of our mutual enemy. Also, I have a curse on me. It’s never explained what the curse actually is though.


The enemy resides in an ancient city, I zone in and see another cave map, perhaps this is what a ruined Snake city looks like?

The cave map here is from one of the Shadow Shard task forces, the one where you can’t see anything 5 feet in front of you.

The cave is filled with the Cult, it appears they are trying to summon their lord, Xoas. I need to kill all the cult leaders, about 4 bosses and 1 EB.

I kill the EB and notice the spell is lifted, arc complete.


-The last missions returning box dialogue thing says “You have defeated an attempt on your live and a cult. Should it be ‘life’? Same typo in the mission debriefing, intentional?




Overall I rated this at three stars. The story feels like it’s a rough draft, a good story, but not quite complete.

- The threat on my life, how and why, is never explained at all. This appears to be the point of the arc and why I am even helping the seer. I am never even given a hint on why I’m involved in all this, it left me scratching my head.

- The curse is poorly explained too, I felt. Sure, there is a curse on me, but what is it and how is it connected to the shadow guy?

- The custom group has every status effect in game it appears, even minions. As a blaster with no natural status effect resistance, this was hell. I was stunned, frightened, held and immobilized all at the same time. Being held until I died was not rare, nor fun.

The custom group as a whole was fun and challenging to play against, but the frequency of the status effects started to get frustrating real fast.


- The last EB ran way too often, he gave me the least amount of troubles actually because of this.

- The last map was frustrating; it gave the arc atmosphere, but still frustrating not being able to see a couple feet in front of yourself.

- A lot of typos throughout the arc, clues and souvenir.


*Points to sig*

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Dang and blast it. I had typed out a long review, and forgot to save a copy of it before hitting "Continue." This means that my review got deleted by the "form you submitted is no longer valid" glitch.

Review of "The Day I Tried To Live," ID # 131780

Soloed with my level 41 Night Widow on Difficulty Level 2.

Overall Thoughts:

I fear that I am not the best audience member for the arc that you have written. You made certain stylistic choices that I fundamentally don't enjoy. Specifically:

This is an arc in which the character playing the arc is largely irrelevant. The missions all seem to be played from the perspective of the Mission Contact himself. The arc is pretty much a vehicle for the contact to explain the form that his insanity took, and the destructive path it led him down. I much prefer to play through arcs in which the contact and the character build a rapport, and the character becomes a primary mover and shaker in the contact's story.

The vast majority of the text in this arc, from the briefings to the clues, deals with what the thought processes were of an insane man. Regrettably, this is not what I find to be a compelling story.

The arc also had some surreal moments that did not sit well with me. Several missions involve the appearance of what I guess were a psychological representation of the contact, spouting insane philosophical ramblings.

Purely from a mechanical standpoint, the mission played reasonably well. It felt a little bland, as there wasn't much dialogue other than what amounted to an insane man's philosophical treatise on life. Trying to follow the psychology that was going on gave me a headache, so I gave up.

I also was not particularly a fan of the large number of Clues that were included. I fear this is a point where we will have differing philosophies. I recognize that Cutthroat Competition has only a single clue that appears, and no souvenir. And with some tweaks, I could probably insert a few more clues. But apart from that, I tend to feel that Clues should be limited to major plot points. You had some instances where a Clue would show up from destroying a non-essential objective, which amounted to how the Mission Contact felt insane with rage, and I felt that ultimately added to a clutter of Clues.

So ultimately, I feel that I am not a good person to give a numerical star rating to this arc, because it's as if I was watching a genre of movie that I don't like. It would be like asking someone who hates horror films to rate a horror film. I respect the effort that you put into your work, and realize that others may very well enjoy it - this style of storytelling simply is not my cup of tea.

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I started using MS Word to write my reviews and copying them over to the forum, specifically because this forum ate a couple of them and I was too frustrated to start over.


I can completely understand your view on my arc. Thanks for at least trying it, though can I ask at which mission you stopped?



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It felt a little bland, as there wasn't much dialogue other than what amounted to an insane man's philosophical treatise on life

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I felt I made up for this with the clues and descriptions of the objects, perhaps I can find a way to add more meaningful dialogue spoken from more allies/hostages.


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This is an arc in which the character playing the arc is largely irrelevant. The missions all seem to be played from the perspective of the Mission Contact himself. The arc is pretty much a vehicle for the contact to explain the form that his insanity took, and the destructive path it led him down

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Imagine yourself in a desert with black sand and an eternal night sky. You see a guy in black and white sitting on a rock. You make your way to him and you two start talking, he then asks you if you want to hear a story.

I was trying to convey a sense of your character hearing the story from the contact, the missions were simply a way to imagine your self there, as the contact is still talking. So when you defeat a Rikti, the contact is saying "When I killed that Rikti". Or, 'As I walked down the tunnel', etc.

Truthfully, I'm still not sure if this style is an appropriate narration for the MA. But with only six or seven plays at four stars, I can't really see yet. That's not a large enough percentage.

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Emansor, thank you for your review of Cutthroat Competition. I'll get right on to playing your arc in return.

I am curious as to what aspects merited a lack of stars, in your opinion. Some people find one or two major issues, and a bunch of minor ones. Since this arc, like all of my other arcs, is hitting the filesize cap, I have to make tough choices about where I can make cuts. Consequently, I am eager to learn what people view as less important elements that they don't pay much attention to, and what elements they consider vital.

A playthrough and review of your arc should be forthcoming shortly.

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It's all at the end of my review. Although I think I should reconsider how I view the rating system, as I see a 5 star as the best of the best, only warranted for a handful of arcs, and I know my arc is no where near that.

Your arc is not mediocre though, perhaps I will bump the rating to four stars. It just seems like more could have been done. See below.


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Most of my criticism is how bland this arc feels. It’s like a tree with no branches.

I always like clues, even if they don’t exactly move the story forward. I was sort of surprised that there were no clues at all. With me, dialogue is quickly forgotten or just spammed away never to be seen. I’m not saying remove the dialogue; just maybe reference it in a clue or something.

None of the allies had any abandoned dialogue, and nothing to say when I re-acquired them.

The custom boss from mission three and the Elite Boss from mission four had their group tags as “All Custom Characters”.

The altars had default text


Also, I would remove flight from the EB, and perhaps tone him down. He flew up to the pipes that had grates around them and got stuck. If I had enough damage I would have been able to kill him without him fighting back. As it was, I wasn’t doing enough damage to counter his regen. I found Leroy and brought him to the EB to see if he could help.

All Leroy did was manage to knock the EB free from being stuck, who in turn, killed Leroy in two hits.

Worthless allies too, perhaps buff them? I do admit I could have been a little lazy with the allies, but even two minions obliterated Rose in a couple hits and she didn’t even scratch the one she was fighting.

I’m not sure what powersets the EB had, but I could only get him to half health, solo, before he regained his full health again. Would have been impossible for me solo, but perhaps you meant it to be that way. It just felt like I hit a brick wall and bringing in outside help felt like I was cheating.

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I see you don't really care for clues, I'm cool with that, you can strike that off my list.

I saw a real problem with the EB though. He kept running away and flew up to the grate surrounding the pipes and was stuck in a potentially exploitable situation. I just didn't have enough fire power, solo, to exploit it, heh.

For me the most vital point is how the story progresses and flows. Which yours did in a well thought out way.

I need to kidnap models for the face maker, CoT are there bothering us, a turf war breaks out, cool.

I may be remembering wrong, but I'm not sure if it was ever explained why the CoT were at the PTS station other than they had an army and were angry, but no points taken off for this.


Dialogue is hard to catch for me, out of habit. I don't play with chat bubbles enabled and personally I don't really pay attention to the top window in my chat box, as everything there is spammed away with xp notices, etc. At the end of the fights with dialogue I had to scroll through all the influence notices and stuff to re-read the chat. But that's my problem, not yours.


Even though I have some spoken dialogue in my arc, I guess that makes me a hypocrite


I never would have guessed you are anywhere near the file cap size, in the end though it's your decision on what to cut.

I also was at the file cap in my arc and I settled on deleting a character from my custom group and changing the costumes to less graphic intense parts, meaning they take up less file sizes.

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this eb is just a problem for blasters in general. i have had numerous complaints. but my best advice to not get in a long distance shooting match with a fire/fire shield eb. you will lose in the long distance part. if you draw her out into the allies they help a lot. i know this because i have tested it with my blasters, down to level 13. do not fight a blaster EB at distance. they will out shoot you... everytime. the resistance to fire is unfortunate, but i cannot change it to something else without causing problems for someone else. or lose the theme... she is already set on standard all the way.

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Emphasis mine.

When I first tried this with my fire blaster, I was doing no damage at all. The only reason the EB even got to half health is because the allies were in melee range.

My snipe did around 40 damage to her and Blaze did 20 damage. The vet power Sands of Mu actually did more damage than most of my other attacks, which was in the single digits.

I understand about the theme, but the the fire resistance completely negated my entire power set. Plus the two allies could not kill her by themselves. This is my only gripe about this arc, but if this intended, so be it.

Perhaps when I15 rolls around you can tone down her fire resistance (I'm assuming it's the fire shield), if possibe, and give her a dull fiery aura from the costume creater? It looks like crap compared but...just an idea.

I'll definitely bump the rating when I can.

Hero Therapy – 119228

Played on a level 50 Fire/Fire blaster with set IOs
Set at Difficulty 3


Mission 1 –

The therapist contact tells me I must confront my inner fears, ok cool.

I shut my eyes, and start dreaming. I’m inside the Midnighters cave and am soon confronted with a Clockwork patrol with some amusing dialogue. I see some Vahz and Trolls talking and as soon as I turn a corner I see a troll running for life as he is followed by three Vahzilok, again, amusing dialogue. I find the Therapist and he says I need to confront the memory of The Librarian.

- The countdown during the mission send off is shuffled around, intended or not, it was a nice feature.

- The de-briefing talks about ‘The Steel You Lack’, but not sure what it is supposed to be or why it was there, seems too convenient. Perhaps an inner courage type of thing, or the part of your mind that protects you from being traumatized?



Mission 2 –

Now that I conquered my fear of the Librarian, she is used as an ally, so I’m told. I enter this mission and am standing inside of an abandoned hospital. I see Freakshow and Tsoo fighting, cool.

I notice a glowie, a pile of bones. Clicking it, I see I am reminiscing about something. Also, there is text that asks “Now why did you break this promise?”. I can only conclude I am supposed to know the pile of bones represented some kind of memory that I pushed into the back of my mind, and in clicking it I am revisiting the memory. Or perhaps it stands for a promise I made, but ultimately was not able to keep.

The ambush that spawned from this was wild, it was a storm of death, completely unexpected. And very nicely executed.

I find the therapist and he tells me I need to defeat my ‘Vanity’, or at least get it under control. I rescue ‘the steel you lack’. Move on to face the boss. Not too hard.

I never found, nor really looked for, the Librarian.

Debriefing proves what the bone pile was. This was a pretty eerie mission, especially when I started to find the body bags. This mission was very well executed.



Mission 3 –

Therapist gives a recap for the briefing, after only two missions I didn’t think this was needed. And again, a smaller recap in the form of a sentence or two is in the mission send off text.

I am now sent to face a painful memory and am told ‘The Steel You Lack’ and ‘Vanity’ will be there for allies.

I enter an office building, full of fire, with a bombardment of text and groups of Council, CoT and the custom group all fighting each other, all around the Therapist.

Making my way through the mission I see piles of ash, I sift through them looking for a lost memory. I felt a tinge of sadness over this, not sure why.

I soon come across The Steel You Lack and Vanity, whose animations are quite humorous, it really fits.

Then I meet the EB. A little girl with fire powers. I soon discover she has a fire shield too which means resistance to fire, making my fire powers all but useless against her. The allies and me got the EB down to half health before she killed everyone. When I came back I loaded up on purples and tried to solo her. Her health bar barely moved in 2 mins of attacking. She killed me three times before I gave up. Saying I was frustrated would be too nice.

Since only quitters quit, I logged onto my level 50 Illusion/Kin controller, who I didn’t notice was set at level 5, and tried again blazing through the first two missions and up until the EB on mission 3.

The EB went down much smoother this time. The kinetic debuffs and the Illusion pets helped a lot. I’m still extremely disappointed this mission was impossible with my Fire blaster. Really disappointed…



Mission 4 –

More recaps on what I just played, too much recaps for my tastes. It felt too safe, but hey, the guy is a therapist.

I am sent to…confront my last objective. I am told it will be a tough ride before we start.

I enter a sewer and see a bunch of random stuff: 5th Column, Rikti, Nemesis. A big box of memories, paintings on the stone wall that reminds me of something, a parking meter from my first parking ticket, etc. pretty cool. They all have custom descriptions too, as they should.

I get to the therapist and make my way down the sewers, freeing the allies as I come across them. In the final room is the objective. An AV called ‘The Door’. I can assume what this means.

I would never be able to do this mission with my Blaster. With my controller, however, I was able to keep him locked down and kept him debuffed and allies buffed. The fight lasted maybe 5 minuets and I never was in danger.

The door was defeated, enabling me to walk through it if I desired.




Overall –

I couldn’t decide between 3 and 4 stars. I think I was still aggravated with the dirty little secret EB and not being able to hurt it at all. I’m glad that it happened on that mission, and not the end of mission 5. I would not have replayed it at all if that happened. I was warned, I know, but still…

The details of the arc were superb. From the maps to the clickables and destroyables, to the dialogue, which was quite humorous at times.

The atmosphere was great.

I’m not sure I can see anything really wrong with the arc other than the fire EB, which would seem to make any offensive fire powerset useless if she is resistant to fire?…I rated the arc a 3 but should have rated it 4. I believe we can re-rate after a week, I will attempt to bump the rating then.

I can tell a lot of thought has been put into this and there is a lot of detail.



*Throws a Cheeto down near his sig*

Cut throat competition
10171

Played with a level 50 fire/fire blaster with mostly set I/O’s, exmped to 20 and therefor losing the set bonuses.
Difficulty set at 3


First mission – The contact, who is a face maker surgeon person, sends me to kidnap some Fashion Models so she can work on them.

I get inside the mission and it’s one of those orange office maps. I see the Circle of Thorns are already there, trying to kidnap the same models I am. I beat them down and take the hostages as my own. The boss was kind of tough.

I needed to escort all the hostages to the doors, I sighed at this, but there was a good story reason to do so.

-No abandoned dialogue or recaptured dialogue on the hostages. I’m sure someone like Rose Thorne would scream her head off and have a snappy response when I pick her back up.



Mission Two –

Circle of Thorns are getting more aggressive in trying to expand their territory and have ambushed the contacts workers as they were on a ‘Routine collection’ aka more kidnapping pretty ladies. I am sent to stop it and find out if the CoT have any more plans so our contact can arrange a strike against them as a retaliation.

Another orange office map that has a tunnel dug under leading to sewers. On the way I am able to save Vhazilok allies.

As I make my way through, me and my army of Vahzilok come upon Leroy. A disgruntles Circle Of Thorns janitor who thinks its a good time for a career change.

Unfortunately I needed to escort him out plus he helps in the fight. There was an ambush and the idiot ran into melee with a LT, getting himself killed. Booted from mission.

-Again, no abandoned dialogue for hostages/allies.
- No clues or side text



Mission three –

Leroy the Janitor defected from the Circle of Thorns and gave our contact some information about the Circle (Even though he died, or was 'defeated', the contact told me she sent some workers to fix him up and bring him back).

Leroy says that The Circle of Thorns have been building sacrificial altars in a cave and I am sent to their location to destroy them. The revenge begins.

The mission is inside of a cave and I need to destroy three altars. The mission also has a custom group that consists of corpses infused with warrior spirits. Pretty cool costume and choice of powers.

- Default description on the altars
- The Boss has the ‘All Custom Characters’ tag
- The custom group reuses the description on all its variants, even the boss.
- Still no more clues or side text


Mission four –

Circle of thorns have rallied an army at the PTS station as retaliation, lead by some demonic super monster. I am told Leroy and some helpers have already started the fighting, softening the CoTs ranks.

I zone into an outdoor industrial map and see I need to rescue four allies and defeat the demonic overlord, fair enough. I was warned I might need help.

The allies are the three models from the first mission, now worked over and looking evil due to the facemaker lady contact, and Leroy, who also gains a new look, coooooool. Pretty cool continuity.

They have new costumes as well. However, they are all extremely weak. They all died within minuets of me rescuing them. Leroy was killed in two hits from Anzzathraxxazzaxxxazzzax, the rest never even made it to him.

Seeing Minmea punching a CoT archer that’s on the ground was a cool use of the animations.

The Elite Boss though, ridiculous. Was not solo friendly at all, and I believe I was warned about this. Though I assumed it would be possible with all four allies, I was extremely wrong.

I had to hire a level 50 tank and a level 23 controller to help me finish. If it wasn’t for the controllers Kinetics, I don’t think we would have finished, which is a bit disappointing. The entire arc had been solo friendly up to this point.

I never received a souvenir at the end, although it might be a bug on my end. It appears I lost a lot of MA souvenirs that I know I had before.


Overall I rated it at three stars.


The story was decent, it moved forward the entire time. The dialogue was nice, humorous at times. I really liked Minmeas animation on the last mission, punching the Archer into the ground all the while taunting him. Nice use of maps, nothing overwhelming and I’m not a stickler for outdoor maps.


Most of my criticism is how bland this arc feels. It’s like a tree with no branches.

I always like clues, even if they don’t exactly move the story forward. I was sort of surprised that there were no clues at all. With me, dialogue is quickly forgotten or just spammed away never to be seen. I’m not saying remove the dialogue; just maybe reference it in a clue or something.

None of the allies had any abandoned dialogue, and nothing to say when I re-acquired them.

The custom boss from mission three and the Elite Boss from mission four had their group tags as “All Custom Characters”.

The altars had default text


Also, I would remove flight from the EB, and perhaps tone him down. He flew up to the pipes that had grates around them and got stuck. If I had enough damage I would have been able to kill him without him fighting back. As it was, I wasn’t doing enough damage to counter his regen. I found Leroy and brought him to the EB to see if he could help.

All Leroy did was manage to knock the EB free from being stuck, who in turn, killed Leroy in two hits.

Worthless allies too, perhaps buff them? I do admit I could have been a little lazy with the allies, but even two minions obliterated Rose in a couple hits and she didn’t even scratch the one she was fighting.

I’m not sure what powersets the EB had, but I could only get him to half health, solo, before he regained his full health again. Would have been impossible for me solo, but perhaps you meant it to be that way. It just felt like I hit a brick wall and bringing in outside help felt like I was cheating.


*Points to sig*

[ QUOTE ]
Hmm...looks like I really do need to put some more clues in the first mission. Apparently, Rollister just isn't enough of a blabbermouth.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whatever dialouge text there was, it was spammed away too quickly and forgotten about while I was reading the clue. I would think a clue about the Dark Dragon would be less confusing than trying to catch what Rollister said while trying to fight him.


[ QUOTE ]
Wait, Malta saying they've been tricked? That's...odd. I put that in mission 5, not 4

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, perhaps it was mission 5. I remember trying not to die fighting a boss while reading the dialogue.


If so, then that makes more sense. Malta now sees they've been had and are retaliating for it.

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Okay, here I have to say "Paragon City - duh". Seriously, it's the only place they ever attack, so where else would it be? I even wrote 'on Paragon' into the clues twice

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, then would the Arachnos attack just be a coincidence? Paragon is huge.

Or was that also a part of the Dark Dragons plans, to get Scirocco out in the open so I could defeat him?

If that is how it was supposed to be portrayed, I didn't catch on. I suppose I was already too confused to actually retain even more story.


[ QUOTE ]
Um...he reads the paper? I dunno. Scirocco is an infamous archvillain known to most people in the game, so I didn't feel that warranted explanation. You think it's necessary?

[/ QUOTE ]

I know about him, but how would the Dark Dragon know about him?

I think in the first or second mission there is some text talking about how the Dragons used to live in this world, only they are shape shifted so we don't know. They left this world due to...persecution or something? Now they live in their fantasy world full of other creatures who see everyone as the same, not different.

If I am supposed to be clued in on the fact the Dark Dragon himself used to reside on this world, and therefore knows all the biggest magic users, I wasn't.

But I now see your intent was to make me ask questions and be confused, I guess your arc does what you want it to do. I bumped up the rating for it.

Hunting the Dark Dragon – 2922

Played with a level 50 Fire/Fire blaster, has mostly set IO’s in all powers (No purples)
Difficulty setting set at 3


Mission 1 –

Starts out good. The Circle of Thorns summoned some dragons, who appear to be a rock group from their own fantasy world, which was a mistake made by the Circle. Ok, cool. I set off to rescue the guys and defeat the boss.

The first Dragon I rescue is Rynn. Soon after I find Pik, whose clue doesn’t quite make sense, the last sentence is “Something he asked you guard as he went for help”. He didn’t ask me to guard anything, or made any reference to guarding anything.

I soon fought and defeated Rollister (Who kept me in perma hold/stun practically). The clue from Rollister states something about Player, but I never got the chance to rescue him at this point. Perhaps Player should be the first hostage to rescue? He was actually the last one I got.

I know you can’t tell a player to go left or right, but Rynn was being held before the tunnel splits off in different directions. I am assuming she is set to ‘front’.



Mission 2 –

Circle of Thorns have summoned the Dragons from under Thorn Isle, due to the power of the Thorn tree, but our contact feels its presence disappear. I am sent to investigate.

First thing I see is Malta…great. Absolute pain in the [censored], but it’s still a challenge. Throughout the mission, though, The Dark Dragon is referenced, as if I should know who it was. This is the first time I have heard of him. I often asked myself if this whole arc was actually a sequel because it seemed I am missing something I should have known about.

I then vaguely recall the COT saying something about…a world being destroyed…or they need the Dragon to help with something…Good intentions it appears by the COT.

It also appears the Dark Dragon hired the Malta to…destroy the thorn tree? To stop the Circle of Thorns magic?

Other than how the story is progressing, through the clues, dialogue, etc, I see no problems with this mission.



Mission 3 –

I am now, in Warburg at a Malta base due to a stolen Flier. I never played this map so I never knew I could enter the building in the middle. I did notice the mercenaries dialogue about the door, but never knew I could actually go in it. My mistake, I wouldn’t say you need to make it clearer though, nice use of dialogue. Also, a patrol of mercenaries made their way to the flier and jumped on it, like they were investigating it. Pretty cool to watch.

I enter the building, fight a boss and now come across…dun dun duuuun, Space Pirates! I have no idea why they are here, but damn, they look cool. Nice descriptions and powers used. They killed me quite a few times.

I open the safe in the back and find blueprints to secret underground rivers leading to an Arachnos submarine pen? Quite confusing and the story is really starting to get tossed around, like the author isn’t quite sure were to go to next. I trudged on.

By this time we are told that the Dark Dragon wants to go back to his world, but wants to make sure no one can summon him back to Earth. It would appear he used the Malta to take out the Circle of Thorns and he used me to take out…Malta?


Mission 4 –

I am warned that Scirocco might show up, ok….I don’t know why he is involved now, but…I am in an underground cave that leads to an Arachnos submarine pen, pretty cool map. Nothing but Malta in the base though, who say they have been tricked (Why were they in the base?). I see a computer that has a message on the screen, which makes Scirocco show up, asking where the hell all the submarines have gone. He was a push over, never got me past half health.

Though now I truly have no clue where the story is going, or why these things are happening.



Mission 5 –

The Dark Dragon, who I still have no clue what it is or where it came from (I can assume the COT summoned it, but I couldn’t find any proof of it) is now in a building in Faultline and I have 30 mins to find him, the contact thinks it’s a countdown timer for something.

I am given a choice, to either capture him or let him go. Though at this point I have no sympathy for him so I decided to take him out. Only, in the last room, there are a lot of guys who suddenly agro me all at once. The robots come out, the shadow guys go invisible and I get knocked back to all hell. I revive myself and put the beat down on the Dark Dragon, only he runs down the elevator at a sliver of health left and I am booted from the map. Mission failed. I never got to read his description or the description of the other dragon present in the room. Huge let down. I am left clueless.




Overall, I couldn’t decide between 2 or 3 stars to rate this mission. Quite frankly, the story was a mess and seemed more complicated than it needed to be. I think I have an understanding of what happened, but it still doesn’t make sense. The only reason I would rate this arc a 3 is due to the first mission and the Space Pirates.

How did the Dark Dragon get summoned with the rock group, or was the rock group an unintentional side effect? I don’t quite understand why the Circle was even summoning Dragons in the first place, only that vague sentence about needing to defend a world…or perhaps destroy one. There should be more lead up to him, perhaps a clue about him.

How does the Dark Dragon know about Malta and Arachnos and why does he use me to shut them down? He doesn’t want to get his hands dirty or has too much other stuff to do? I suppose I can buy that.

Why are the Space Pirates there? The coolest thing in this arc, seemingly, has no point at all from what I can remember.

The whole thing with Arachnos and Scirocco made no sense to me at all. This is the biggest criticism of mine. How does the Dark Dragon even know about Scirocco? Arachnos was planning a sneak attack…on what? The Dark Dragon tricked me into stopping this attack? Wha…? What did he do with the submarines?

I suppose I can look past everything and say “It may not make sense, but it’s what happened”, but I can’t get past why Arachnos was ever involved.


Although after writing this, I believe I will end up giving the arc three stars. It just looks like this arc is a rough draft, and the end was kind of a shrug of shoulders, as if to say, oh well.

Thanks for the feedback.

-Changed the custom group. Changed some from Lt's to minions.

- Added better descriptions


Comments -

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You’ve got default text for the “clear out the last room” objective though

[/ QUOTE ]

For some reason I see no way of changing the description for this.

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Default text for most of the destroyables, too, as well as the hostage

[/ QUOTE ]

There wasn't supposed to be one for the hostage, on purpose. I changed the destroyables though, I did overlook those.

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It’s a shame there aren’t any “pure Rikti base” maps. You work with what you have, I guess.

One of the amusing observations about many online games in the age of “customization” is that you spend an hour in the character creator picking from eighteen gajabillion combinations of eyebrow, scar, lip shape, and nose groove, and then you look like a unique and beautiful snowflake… for anybody who’s looking directly at your face… in the 5 minutes before you put on your newbie helmet.

The point is, the face is small in relation to both the screen and the rest of the character, and with most of the changes of the mission’s internal narrator being visible only on his face, they go unnoticed.

Maybe his shirt explodes off him in the vacuum of space?

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, I expected more backlash for this mission. I'm happy with the way the hostages look though. I only changed their faces for those who cared to even look, just a small detail.


[ QUOTE ]
Hmm. An enemy group composed entirely of lieutenants, huh? This might get a bit problematic.

I really, truly, do not like this map, especially this map with chained objectives. There’s just so much terrain to cover and so many places to check. At least the ally’s a bit of help in the cleanup and he can follow me easily.

I clean out the entire map, to find States alone in a vacant lot I’d already cleared out. What the heck. Classic outdoor overspawn, I guess.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is my biggest problem concerning the design as well. From a story stand point it has to be outside, but I can find no maps suitable enough to make it fun too. Perhaps I will remove the chained objectives. I also added 'casting' animations to the EB to make him easier to spot.


Spoilers -



The contact is dead, hence all the black and white, but I do not feel he is a ghost. I did not think this was important enough to elaborate on. Perhaps its his consciousness, after all he still feels trapped in his insanity, it just changed its direction.

There wasn't exactly supposed to be sympathy, but if there were, it definitely wouldn't go to 'The Machine'. It's the cause of the contacts every bad decision.

Based on what you said of the design, I am feeling I wrote the synopsis wrong again. I'll have to think it over. The only part of the madness you see is in the form of the hostages, their clues and descriptions. It's all I ever meant to show of it, until the last mission.

You are more or less observing all the important turning points of the story...with yourself acting out...what happens...Yeah, I have to think this over more.

Some smaller Rikti ship interior maps would be cool.

Well never mind I guess, it worked the second time around.

I am trying to edit a published arc. I want to delete a battle from mission 3 and make a fair amount of small text changes, I do so and hit republish. A couple seconds later I see "Your arc has been updated". I log off.

Two hours later I come back to do some more changes and notice the battle in mission three is still there and no text has been changed/added. Everything I did was not saved.

Should it take this long to actually update my edits, is it my computer or what? Was someone in the middle of playing the arc?

It was quite frustrating when I found out nothing was saved.

131780

Rip it up like when you just can't open a Cheetos bag.

The fourth mission has an ally to help with the custom group and EB, if you need him.

Changed second mission to a smaller map type and is now only a kill all in back room, text changed to refer to this.

Smaller changes to mission three. I could not find a map suitable to be an interior of a Rikti ship. Will continue using 'The Seer' for now. Removed the 'battle', the point was their dialogue but it was too chaotic to even notice.

Mission Four map changed to outdoor Steel Canyon. This appears smaller and easier to maneuver around than the other outdoor map. Upgraded the Allys secondary and gave him a 'Casting Fire' animation making him easier to find due to the green explosions.

Updated character descriptions to further help in relations to each other.

Updated mission text throughout all five missions, seems to be a little smoother now.

Comments - Spoilers will follow

[ QUOTE ]
his train of thought in the 2nd mission turned me off. The story makes it seem he is out to kill god. Only in the 4th mission did I realize he was trying to destroy his other selves?

[/ QUOTE ]

His train of thought in the second mission kicks off the rest of the arc, it's the point. He will try to escape his own pain at any cost, blame anyone other than himself, no matter who he hurts. The contacts thought process is twisted, we are seeing his mental health breakdown in the very final stages, hence the downward spiral. Things were never meant to be clear cut at this point. Remember, the contact is telling you a story and you are imagining yourself there, as him.

I wouldn't say he has 'other selves', this is not a story about an identity crisis. If more people don't understand this part of the story I will elaborate on it more in the arc, but it all has to do with God. I felt it was told well enough at the end of mission 2 and beginning of mission 3.

[ QUOTE ]
The third mission starts off with a very convulted narration. I had no clue who the diety was, who the ruiner was and was overall confused

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A Deity IS a God. I used the word Deity in place of the word God, I kept getting errors. It seems fixed now though and the word God is put in the correct places. 'Ruiner' was just an adjective the contact gave the deity.

[ QUOTE ]
I moved on and rescued prisioners and using the precedent from the 2nd mission believed that the prisioners I was rescuing was Red actively doing the mission. This proved incorrect as it was apparently an internal power struggle being played out. The dialouge mentioning that were too vauge and too cryptic. You may want to expand more on that.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are more or less hearing the contacts thoughts at that time, it's also a reason I made them all black and white. Some have small bits of color. It was meant to visually show what was happening to the contact and his thought process.


Thanks for playing it (Can I return the favour?). Talking to you in game was helpful to me, as was this post. Hope you play it at least once more and finish it, you missed the ending!

As I told you before I became too involved in writing the story and was unable to stand back and see what made sense or not. It all made sense to me, heh. I also struggled with the file size limit and getting things that mattered into the story.

The more feedback I get, the more I can tweak it.



The plot of this story in no way reflects my attitude toward religion.

More small changes were made, mainly various texts, including the description.

"Become emerged in the contacts story: A tale of a downward spiral filled with self destruction, rage, desperation and a hint of love. Fill his shoes as you experience his madness first hand, live the story of a hero and a madman. "

Huh? Eh? Nudge nudge. Any better? Yeah, no? Don't care? That's cool.

4 stars at 4 plays. If you play and rate, I'll return the favor. Just give me an arc #.

[ QUOTE ]
Current queue status is listed below. When requesting a review, please include morality and level range.

Hero: 161066, 81378, 170506, 163274, 57352, 149323, 137705, 171149, 161797, 79354, 75386, 59147, 15988, 1036, 55715, 37636, 17006, 174368, 60280, 178774, 100306, 181244, 91644, 167493, 149765, 118009, 191775

Villain: 162898, 77533, 161865, 32801, 97774, 153720

Neutral: 84420, 170547, 123675, 175675, 156389, 143017, 177826, 67356, 1296

Hero 13-20: 131780, 135563, 24926

Villain 13-20: 103878, 114284

Neutral 13-20: 137561

Rerun: 128109, 181165, 106553

[/ QUOTE ]

131780 is Neutral (Some might consider it Villain), and minimum level is 30, although best to run it at 40 as the last mission had a level 41+ enemy.

Looks like I'll toss my arc out into the mix, if your still reviewing things.

Title: The Day I Tried To Live
Arc ID: 131780
Morality: Neutral (Leans more to the Red side of things)
Difficulty Level: 40+ Medium, -40 hard (just a guess)
Enemy Groups: Crey, Rikti, Custom Group
Number of EB/AVS – 2 EBs, the first EB mission has an ally that is not needed to complete the mission, but will help with the fight. The second EB is required to finish the mission, no ally help provided.
Story Type – Serious.
Mission Count: Five

Synopsis – Become emerged in the contacts story: A tale of a downward spiral filled with self destruction, rage, desperation and a hint of love. Fill his shoes as you experience his madness first hand, live the story of a hero and a madman.

I'm confused as well, is this all over the MA thing? This 'rage' seems a little overblown to me...

[ QUOTE ]
Or wait till Going Rogue goes live and get it as a GM. I am just a tad ticked off that Heroes were able to get a Villain GM before Villains could.

[/ QUOTE ]


Get it as a what?